A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter E

embase

Archaic Terms
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

An archaic verb meaning to degrade, lower in status, or debase; in poetry, it describes a fall from grace, a moral decline, or the diminishing of a person's worth or dignity.

Detailed Definition
The term 'embase' is an archaic word that signifies the act of lowering or degrading something. In this poem, it is used to convey the idea of diminishing the world's glory, suggesting that the beauty of the Angel's face stands in stark contrast to the superficiality of worldly values. This word adds a layer of depth to the poem's exploration of art and beauty.
Example
Example in poetry:
In “this world’s worthless glory to embase,” embase means to lower, degrade, or make base, close in sense to debase; A Renaissance poet might say flattery “embases” honour by turning virtue into performance; In moral or religious poetry, worldly pride can embase the soul, dragging it from spiritual aspiration to vanity; The word often carries a downward movement, as if noble metal were alloyed with something cheap; A modern paraphrase might be: “No praise of worldly splendour can embase her worth,” meaning it cannot lessen or cheapen it
Additional Notes
The use of 'embase' illustrates the poet's intention to critique the superficial nature of worldly glory in comparison to divine beauty.; Found in the poem, The glorious portrait of that Angel's face by Edmund Spenser
Also Known As
debase lower degrade
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